Pokemon Go director admits even he finds it hard to “keep track” of paid content

Even the director of Pokemon Go is finding it hard to keep up with all the paid content featured within the in-game shop.

While Pokemon Go is a free-to-play game at its core, the title does offer paid content and microtransactions, features that have been the centerpiece of plenty of discussion throughout the community of late.

Since the beginning of 2024, every single event Niantic has released has included additional paid content for players to purchase, with exclusive rewards or items locked behind these price tags.

While this push towards microtransactions has been confusing for some players, even the director of Pokemon Go, Michael Steranka, is finding it hard to keep up with all the paid content being added to the game.

In an interview with Dot Esports, Steranka discussed the increased presence of microtransactions in Pokemon Go, admitting that balancing paid content in a free-to-play title is a “tricky” task for the dev team.

“Our philosophy for Pokemon Go is and will always be that we want the baseline experience to be free for players,” Sterenka began.

“But we’ve also come to this understanding that there are players out there that who deeply care about this game and want to invest more into this game, and we want to give them that value to invest in.”

The director later confessed in the same interview that with the recent influx of content, even he has found it hard to “keep track” of paid content in the game when browsing through the Pokemon Go shop.

“There was even one point for me where I was looking through the shop, and I was like, Oh, wow, it’s hard for me to keep track of what ticket does what and where.”

However, Sterenka assured trainers that the devs are constantly working to “adapt” and “experiment” with paid content in Pokemon Go.

“You’ll realize that this season, there are fewer tickets and the previous season as an example,” he explained  

Despite the larger presence paid content is beginning to play in Pokemon Go, Sterenka reassured trainers that, while it may not be going anywhere, the devs are working hard to ensure the game is still very much so accessible to those who do not want to spend any money.

“That’s something that will continue to evolve over time. But ultimately, we really want to optimize [the paid ticket options while] still offering a very robust and fun free experience for players who aren’t looking to spend in the game as well.”